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Chapter 3 - The Room of Hidden Things

They followed Draco and the girls up the familiar path to the seventh floor. The Slytherins stopped in front of the awful tapestry where Draco said, "Stand guard, Goyle."

"I'm Crabbe."

"Fine! Stand guard, Crabbe, and don't let anyone catch you looking in your own knickers again, you disgusting pervert."

Malfoy paced before the blank wall and said, "I need a place to hide this box, I need a place to hide this box, I need a place to hide this box."

A door appeared, but not the same door that opened into the room of requirement, this was utilitarian, less ornate. Draco went in and the door disappeared. The polyjuiced Crabbe stood in front of the tapestry, his hand probing the front of his skirt as if he were looking for something.

As quietly as possible, Harry, Hermione and Luna moved away from the corridor and found one of the many unused rooms in the thousand-year-old castle.

Harry locked the door and cast the muffliato charm in case anyone happened by.

"That's why I couldn't get in yesterday." Luna said.

"He's got Crabbe and Goyle polyjuiced into those cute little girls." Hermione said, shaking her head as if trying to dislodge something there. "Ew!" she said, "Just, Ew!"

"What do we do? Confront Malfoy in the room?" Harry asked.

Luna considered the probabilities, and didn't like the majority of them.

With a shake of her sandy blonde head she returned from her ponderings. "We're going to need two potions, veritaserum and the draught ut alieno - the draught of forgetfulness; both are in Professor Slughorn's storeroom. I know what to look for but I don't think he'll let me have either potion, as they are both ministry restricted items.

Harry smiled, "Sometimes it pays to have friends in low places.

Oh Dobby?"

A 'pop' like the sound of a champagne cork produced the wide eyed Hogwarts house elf, Dobby.

The manic little elf looked like he was going to start humping Harry's leg at any moment.

"How can Dobby serve the Great Harry Potter sir, misses?"

Luna knelt down to be at eye level with the odd elf, "Hello, little friend, you are Harry's very good friend, aren't you?"

Dobby stood his full thirty-seven inches tall, not counting his many hats, and said, "Dobby is being the Great Harry Potter's bestest elf friend!"

Luna used her wand to conjure images of two distinctive potions bottles. "Harry needs these two potions . . ."

And the elf was gone.

"Was it something I said?" Luna asked, worried that she'd somehow offended the elf.

Hermione grumbled, "Wait for it."

Another 'pop' and Dobby was back with apotion bottle in each hand, "Is these what youse be needing for the Great Harry Potter, miss?"

"Yes, thank you, little friend."

"Yes," Harry added, "thank you, Dobby, you're the best!"

Tears of gratitude spilled over as the elf disappeared.

"Nothing but race-based slavery - disgusting."

"We'll address our house-elf issues in a later session, I think. Now we need to get back to the seventh floor." Luna said, "And quickly."

Three minutes later they turned the corner and saw two harmless looking waifs in Slytherin house robes.

"Stupefy on three," Luna whispered,"One, two, three, stupefy!"

The girls looked positively cherubic, lying on the floor, unconscious.

Luna started patting down their cloaks and uniforms.

"What are you looking for?" Harry asked.

"Should be a bottle or a flask or a . .. ah! Found it. Check the other one for a vial, like this one."

Hermione did and came up with a matching small glass bottle, the contents of which they all recognized.

"Un-stopper Goyle's bottle, be careful not to spill any."

She did and Luna appeared to inspect Hermione's skirt.

"Perfect! Here," Luna said, "hold up the bottle."

She dropped in a short, ginger hair.

Then dropped another in Crabbe's bottle, corked it, and returned it to the little girl's skirt pocket.

"Luna, have I told you lately that I love you?" Hermione asked.

"Yes, but it's still nice to hear."

Harry snorted, "You put Crookshank's hair in their polyjuice."

Hermione's smile was predatory, "And human to animal polyjuice transformations last for several days, not just an hour. Believe me, I know."

"Whatever Draco is doing in there must require a great deal of concentration, so, as long as he's not too near the door, we have a better than even chance of catching him unawares." Luna explained.

She then pulled a tiny, gilded egg from her robe's inner pocket and paced the corridor saying, "I need a place to hide this egg, I need a place to hide this egg, I need a place to hide this egg."

The plain door formed in the wall.

"Wands out." Harry said, "And let's get under the cloak."
As silently as three church mice, the trio slipped into the Room, not of Requirement, but of Hidden Things.

Row upon row of mangled furniture, melted cauldrons, and contraband of every description filled the seemingly endless room. Here a fanged Frisbee, nearly disenchanted, hovered pitifully a few inches above the litter-strewn floor. There a hoard of empty sherry bottles overflowed a bin.

"Shite, shite, shite shite, Shite!"

"And here I thought it would be hard to find him." Harry whispered.

Malfoy stood before a familiar looking cabinet, the ground before him strewn with books and scrolls of parchment. He looked on the verge of tears as he beat on the side of the furniture with his fists.

"This has to work, it has to - everything depends on this!" he whimpered.

As the imperceptible trio drew nearer, a protruding broken table leg snagged the cloak and fell to the floor with aclatter.

Malfoy went from piteous child to murderous Death Eater in less than half a second, "Avada Kedavra!" he screamed and a jet of sickly green light just missed Harry by a fraction of an inch.

"Expeliarmus!" Harry shouted from under the cloak and Malfoy's wand sailed off into the distance.

Furious, Harry threw off the cloak and advanced on the panicked Slytherin, cocked his fist back and punched Draco in the nose, which broke with a satisfying crunch.

"Petrificus totalus!" Hermione shouted, coming out from under the cloak.

"Please note, Malfoy, that I broke your nose before you were petrified, not after, you bloody gutless son of a bitch!"

Luna placed a calming hand on Harry's back and said, "I'm sorry to have to undo your fine work, Harry, but we're going to have to put things back the way they were before we came in, including fixing Draco's nose."

Hermione knelt by the fallen, petrified Malfoy heir and smiled most unpleasantly, "The bad news is that resetting your nose is going to hurt - quite a lot more than breaking it did. The good news is that you won't remember the pain after we've gone."

Saying this, Hermione touched her wand tip to the end of Draco's bloodied nose and said, "Repairo!"

The sounds of bones and cartilage in Malfoy's face reforming made Luna more than a bit nauseous. She saw that Harry and Hermione were a bit squicked as well.

Draco would have given half his family's fortune just to be able to scream.

A few scourgify and turgio charms later and all the evidence of Draco's little 'mishap' had been swept away.

"Vestri caput capitis." Luna intoned, releasing Draco's head from petrifaction, and then pinched his tender, just healed nose.

"Three drops, if you would, please, Hermione."

Three drops later the questioning began.

"Are you a Death Eater?" Harry asked.

"Yes."

"Are you trying to kill Professor Dumbledore?" Luna asked.

"Yes."

"Have you already killed?" Hermione asked, afraid of the answer.

"Yes."

"Who?" She asked, aghast.

"I don't know - some mudblood."

"What are you doing in this room?" Harry asked.

"Trying to fix this cabinet."

"To what end?" Luna asked.

"To let Death Eaters into Hogwarts."

Luna nodded, "I understand, this is not a vanishing cabinet, it's a portal."

"Yes."

"That wasn't a question, Draco, it was an observation."

Harry asked, "When? When are the Death Eaters coming?"

"As soon as I fix my end of the portal."

"Where is the other end?"

"Borgin and Burkes."

"Draco," Hermione asked, "What do you have to do to get the dark mark?"

Luna put a soothing hand on her sister's arm, "Don't ask a question if you don't want to hear the answer, Hermione."

"I need to hear this; I have to try to understand what we're up against." She looked at Draco, "Tell me."

"You have to kill someone. And you have to enjoy it."

"And did you?" Hermione whispered.

"Yes, she cried and pleaded and said she'd do anything and I let her and it felt so good!"

Draco's eyes seemed to clear, and he smiled. "It felt good because as I rogered her I thought of you. When I killed her I didn't use my wand, I used my potions knife. I slit her throat. I looked into her terrified eyes as she bled out and I thought of you."

Hermione stumbled back as if she'd been struck a physical blow.

Luna pinched the Slytherin's nose shut and handed Harry the other potion bottle. She barely resisted the urge to tell him to empty the bottle into Malfoy's mouth, leaving him a mindless husk for the rest of his life.

"Three drops, Harry." She said.

Malfoy's eyes rolled up in his head as the memories of the past three hours were permanently erased - beyond the reach of any charm or spell or potion.

Harry none too gently dragged Malfoy out of the Room of Hidden Things and deposited him in a heap next to the polyjuiced Crabbe and Goyle.

Luna knelt down and wound her fingers in a lock of pale, blond Malfoy hair then pulled it out in one hard tug. She carefully wound the hair into a circle and placed it in the inner-pocket of her robe.

"Dobby!"

'Pop!'

"Harry Potter calls Dobby, not once, but twice in one day!"

"Dobby, I need you to return these potions to Professor Slughorn's potions storeroom. And can you return these three sleeping beauties to the Slytherin common room?"

The normally manic house elf seemed to sense the gravity of the situation. He nodded solemnly and said, "I will be taking the sneaky snakes back to their room, but you should be knowing something. Little former master is having the bad mark now."

"We know, Dobby." Luna said sadly, "We know."

The elf disappeared, taking the "sneaky snakes" with him.

Luna recalled the Room of Requirement and she and Harry led the sobbing Hermione back to their chaise.

Luna sighed, "You have looked into the face of evil, true evil, Hermione. I wish you hadn't."

"H-he's just a boy, no older than Harry. How can he have done such horrible things - how?"

"Choices." Luna said, "Every day we have an infinite number of choices. Draco's choices have led him to become amurderer, worse, he feels no remorse."

"I-I thought the Wizarding World would be wonderful."

Luna understood, "An enchanted place, where all your problems could be solved by magic."

"But a muggleborn witch in the Wizard-centric world is never going to be anything more than a second-class citizen - I'm less than human to them - you heard him, he completely hates me. He hates the very fact that I exist. And he wants me dead, but first he wants me to suffer."

She squeezed her eyes shut, "Oh that poor girl, what he did to her! She died in pain, humiliated, terrified!"

Luna pulled her into a tight embrace, "They won't touch you - we won't let them!"

Harry quietly rose from the chaise.

"No!" Hermione cried, "Stay. Please stay, Harry!"

He fell back into the cushions and held Hermione tightly, fiercely protectively.

They lay for several long minutes as Hermione cried.

Luna knew that these were tears of grief for a girl Hermione didn't even know, but who symbolized all the non-magical victims of the pure-blood bigots that surrounded them.

Finally she cried herself to sleep.

Nightmares might have come, but Luna and Harry were there, and when Hermione's brow furrowed, they soothed and comforted and loved her with soft murmurs and caresses.

It was the middle of the afternoon when Hermione sat up with a gasp, "Oh!"

She saw Luna and Harry looking back at her with love in their eyes.

"I'm sorry, I don't know what happened, I can't believe I fell asleep."

Harry and Luna sat up and hugged her.

"You slept because you needed to, it was a healing sleep, and we were happy to be here for you."

"But we were going to explore." She said, with a touch of frustration in her voice.

Luna shook her head, "Now would not be a good time, we can wait a few days. After five days you'll come to us in Ottery St. Catchpole, and the day after that we'll be off to France."

"Right now, we have somewhere else to be." She added.

"Where's that, Luna?" Harry asked.

"Gryffindor Tower."

The trio approached the portrait of the corpulent lady.

Hermione made the introductions, "Good afternoon, this is Luna Lovegood, she is a guest of mine and Harry's."

Luna placed her fingers in her ears and turned her back so that she wouldn't hear the password. She only turned around again because Harry embraced her from behind and nuzzled her neck.

The lady in the portrait said, "That was very considerate of you, Miss Lovegood, most students would have eavesdropped and forced me to change the password."

Luna curtsied, "Thank you miss, you're very kind."

"And it seems we have an inter-house romance." the lady said with a twinkle, "That always makes for such juicy gossip, I-I mean conjecture."

Luna looked at Harry and Hermione,"Should we tell her?"

Hermione smiled, "What better way to let the whole world know?"

Luna turned back to the painting, "Oh, we're not a couple, miss." she embraced Harry from the left as Hermione slid to his right, "We're a thruple!"

The lady's eyes grew wide as saucers as she said, "Come in, come in!" And in the time it took the trio to cross over the threshold the portrait lady was gone with a speed that belied her size.

They entered the common room and saw Ron sitting at the chess table, apparently trying to show Lavender the finer points of the game.

"Hello Ronald." Luna said dreamily, "Fancy a game?"

Ron looked up expectantly until he saw who had asked.

"Um, no, thank you, Luna, I, um, we were just leaving."

"We are?" Lavender asked, obviously confused.

"Yeah, we're going to get something to eat, um, Quidditch related, or something."

"Something?" Lavender asked, wiggling her eyebrows.

"Yeah, ah, later." He said, pulling the unresisting girl behind him.

Hermione smirked, "Food, Quidditch and chess. That pretty well sums him up."

Luna's eyes unfocused for a moment, then she said, "Lavender's not on the potion, and she plans to give Ronald a'remember me' gift before everyone goes home for the holidays."

Hermione's eyes grew wide, "But they're too young. . ."

"And what would we be doing right now if it hadn't been for the Slytherin boys?"

Hermione sputtered, "Yes, but, I mean, I'm on the potion and. . ."

Luna patted Hermione's hand, "I'm sure we can convince Lavender to have a dose of 'Peace of Mind' with breakfast."

Hermione looked relieved. "Of all the irresponsible. . ."

Her rant was interrupted by Neville entering the room.

"Hey Harry, Luna, Hermione! Are we off to the Department of Mysteries again?" he asked, jokingly.

Luna smiled her dreamiest smile and said, "As a matter of fact, Neville, we are!"